The Tea Party Occupy Connection
A Small Movement with Huge Potential
Tea party, Occupy supporters find they have many similarities | DailyTidings.com
Berto Jongman: Interesting National Security Links
Articles & Chapters
C-SPAN Bill Roggio Editor Long War Journal Use of Military Drones with Statistics (VIDEO)
Memories of Bin Laden are fading, but his methods and ideology remain
Senate follows House with more questions about construction of Savannah River Site's MOX plant
Mario Profaca: Put Tynt “Read More” Cut and Paste Scam Out of Business– Plus Code Blockers
Commerce, Idiocy, IO Impotency
Must read this!
Daring Fireball
Friday, 28 May 2010
Over the last few months I’ve noticed an annoying trend on various web sites, generally major newspaper and magazine sites, but also certain weblogs. What happens is that when you select text from these web pages, the site uses JavaScript to report what you’ve copied to an analytics server and append an attribution URL to the text. So, for example, if I were using this “service” here on Daring Fireball, and you selected the first sentence of this article, copied it, then switched to another app to paste the text you just copied, instead of pasting just the sentence you selected and intended to copy, you’d instead get:
Over the last few months I’ve noticed an annoying trend on various web sites, generally major newspaper and magazine sites, but also certain weblogs.
Read more: http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks/#ixzz0oyLiD4Qh
I.e., three blank lines followed by “Read more:”, then the URL from which the text was copied, then an identifying hash code used for tracking purposes.
Among the sites where I’ve seen this in use are TechCrunch (example) and The New Yorker (example). The JavaScript tomfoolery happens with most text copied from the site — whether you’re copying the entire article, a paragraph, or a sentence.
Read full article — includes code to block this insane intrusive idiocy.
Phi Beta Iota: Although “corruption” can certainly include “idiocy” we felt it appropriate to recognize Tynt — and the morons that let them corrupt web sites — with a special new category — Idiocy. Tip of the Hat to Mario Profaca for flagging, and Daring Fireball for putting into words — and providing code solutions –a public service.
David Isenberg: Private Military Corporations – Chapter Twelve
Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military
David Isenberg
Huffington Post, 29 April 2012
After ten years of operation by private military and security (PMSC) contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, what ethical lessons should we draw from their use?
Namely, that private sector contracting has become an integral part of modern international operations, and in Afghanistan and Iraq contracting has been largely fruitful, despite some well-publicized problems and the enormous difficulties inherent to reconstructions in the midst of violent conflicts.
At least, that is the view of Doug Brooks and Mackenzie Duelge, who co-wrote Chapter 12 in the book Conflict Management and “Whole of Government”: Useful Tools for U.S. National Security Strategy? which was recently published by the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.
Considering that Chapter 12 is best known as a chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, the authors may have wished for another chapter number. On the other hand, considering the gap between some claims and evidence, perhaps it is appropriate.
Full article below the line.
Continue reading “David Isenberg: Private Military Corporations – Chapter Twelve”
Mini-Me: Goldman Sachs – the Corruption Machine…
Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government
Huh?
Exclusive: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game
Andy Rowell
SpinWatch, 20 March 2011
In light of Sunday Times’ revelations concerning MEPs being paid cash to place amendments on financial reform, a report published today by SpinWatch exposes financial lobbying in Brussels.
The report, entitled, Doing God’s Work: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game details Goldman Sachs’ secret lobbying activities in the UK and Brussels and links to politicians. It exposes:
The extensive links between Goldman Sachs and the Conservative Party;
* Political donations totalling £8.5million to British politicians in the past decade from Goldman and ex-Goldman people;
* Goldman Sachs’ immense lobbying machine in Brussels, including active membership of over a dozen financial sector lobby groups;
* Extensive meetings between Goldman Sachs and Conservative MEPs including: 9 meetings in six months with a key MEP on the Parliament’s Economics and Monetary Committee; and a total of 36 meetings between just four Tory MEPs and Goldman Sachs, its lobby groups or PR companies acting on their behalf;
* The bank’s lobbying campaign to undermine political reform on derivatives and alternative investment funds including: private dinners and unminuted “after office hours” meetings, high-level conferences and targeted campaigns to Commission officials, MEPs and their assistants;
* How Goldman Sach’s lobbyists tried to undermine amendments in a key report on derivatives, seen as “financial weapons of mass destruction”;
* The bank’s lobbying enabled them to gamble on food futures and drive up prices.
Report author, journalist Andy Rowell said: “A year ago, David Cameron said that lobbying was the next big scandal waiting to happen. This report shows that banks like Goldman Sachs – who are intricately connected to the Tories – continue to lobby to get what they want.”
Rowell continued: “The entire regulatory process – and the lobbying activity that surrounds it – has to become significantly more transparent and accountable. If it is allowed to be captured by bankers, the next financial crisis will only be a matter of time.”
The report is being published just as the debate on financial reform in Brussels reaches a crucial stage. The parliament and commission are finalising plans for reform of the OTC Derivatives market as well as Credit Default Swaps.
It also comes as the government is due to launch a consultation on a statutory register of lobbying, for the UK.
The report can be downloaded here.
Safety copy: How Goldman Sachs Rigs the Game (SpinWatch March 2011)
James M. Wall: United Methodists To Boycott US Companies Selling to Israel in Support of Genocide and Atrocities Against Palestinians?
06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities
Methodists Face Moment of Occupation Truth
28 Apr 12
by James M. Wall
The mainstream media does not know it, and far too many high steeple church folk do not want to know it.
But in Tampa, Florida, this week, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church will make a decision.
They will spend the week writing and rewriting. Some, like Alissa Bertsch Johnson, a campus minister at Washington State University (at right), will passionately state their case.
Before the gavel falls on the last session of the 2012 General Conference, the people called Methodists will have responded, one way or another, to the call from Palestinian Christians that they take one small step toward ending the Israeli Occupation.
They may vote to endorse a targeted divestment resolution.
Read full article. Includes two videos featuring Jimmy Carter.
Phi Beta Iota: Israel is the old South Africa, morally disengaged, committing genocide and atrocities against the Palestinian people. Not only should everyone be boycotting companies whose services and equipment are being used to gheto-ize the Palestinians, but every US citizen should consider a tax boycott until such time as the US Government stops paying 20% of the Israeli budget with money borrowed in our name, and stops funding dictators who perpetuate societies of fear. Ironically, both the US and Israel are now much closer to Nazi Germany they they are to either the Founding Fathers or the theology of Jesus Christ. We note only have a crisis of Zionism, we have a crisis of neo-fascism on the right and neo-socialism on the left in the USA, both spawned by political and financial crime families.
See Also:
Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, 2012)
Christopher Lee Bollyn, Solving 9-11: The (Zionist) Deception that Changed the World (Christopher Bollyn, 2012)
Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins, The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century (Progressive Press, 2008)
James F. Simon, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States (Simon & Schuster, 2003
Reference: Social Media Intelligence? Or More OSINT Than Spies Can Handle?
Articles & Chapters
The growth of social media poses a dilemma for security and law enforcement agencies. On the one hand, social media could provide a new form of intelligence – SOCMINT – that could contribute decisively to keeping the public safe. On the other, national security is dependent on public understanding and support for the measures being taken to keep us safe.
Social media challenges current conceptions about privacy, consent and personal data, and new forms of technology allow for more invisible and widespread intrusive surveillance than ever before. Furthermore, analysis of social media for intelligence purposes does not fit easily into the policy and legal frameworks that guarantee that such activity is proportionate, necessary and accountable.
This paper is the first effort to examine the ethical, legal and operational challenges involved in using social media for intelligence and insight purposes. It argues that social media should become a permanent part of the intelligence framework but that it must be based on a publicly argued, legal footing, with clarity and transparency over use, storage, purpose, regulation and accountability. #Intelligence lays out six ethical principles that can help government agencies approach these challenges and argues for major changes to the current regulatory and legal framework in the long-term, including a review of the current Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Tip of the Hat to Berto Jongman.
Phi Beta Iota: Government intelligence is incompetent with what they have now. “SOCMINT” (for Social Media Intelligence) is as silly as claiming that Document Media Exploitation (DOMEX) is a separate discipline. Both will spawn bureaucracies and undeserved promotions along with attendant fraud, waste, and abuse. While well intentioned, this contribution is part of the problem–doing the wrong things righter–not part of the solution. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) covers both of the above, and until the government can make the leap from OSINT to M4IS2 (Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making) it is by no means ready to muck about within Social Media. We are quite certain that social media intelligence is emergent, and it will emerge faster, better, cheaper (if not free) than any government bureaucracy could possibly fund, imagine, or execute in several decades.
